The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

ITALO CALVINO, The Literature Machine

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

ITALO CALVINO, The Uses of Literature

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

ITALO CALVINO, "Cybernetics and Ghosts", The Literature Machine

The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.